There were over 555 million websites on the internet at the turn of the year, according to new statistics.

A study from pingdom.com revealed the extraordinary growth of the internet in 2011. An estimated 300 million of the web pages available online were created in 2011 and these websites now have a potential audience of 2.1 billion web users across the world.

The growth could well significant a huge rise in the number of people thinking about investing in a website hosting service, given the benefits a fast network can bring; such as making the connection between the seller and the buyer as reliable as possible.

Although previous research has shown that internet adoption amongst older generations is on the rise, it appears that is still largely a place for youngsters. The report suggests 45 per cent of internet users are under 25.

The report also revealed that there were 324 top level domains registered in 2011. 95.5 million websites were using the .com suffix at the end of 2011; whilst the next popular suffix, .net, was the domain for 13.5 million websites.

A statement from Pingdom has suggested that the internet is likely to experience similar growth this year.

According to cnet.com, it said: "For 2012, there's every reason to think that the internet, by any measure, will keep growing. As we put more of our personal as well as professional lives online, we will come to rely on the internet in ways we could hardly imagine before.

"For better or worse, the internet is now a critical component in almost everything we do."